UCI med students suit up with Google Glass

May 15, 2014

Updated May 19, 2014 10:17 a.m.

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Dr. Patrick Hu, an anesthesiologist, glances around hands-free with Google Glass at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Patient data from the operating room and more can be shared via Google Glass, which could have implications for patient care. CINDY YAMANAKA, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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Dan Parks from Laguna Beach is one of the early Google Glass Explorers, an early adopter who paid $1,600 to get Google's eyewear. ROSE PALMISANO, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Dr. Patrick Hu, an anesthesiologist, glances around hands-free with Google Glass at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Patient data from the operating room and more can be shared via Google Glass, which could have implications for patient care. CINDY YAMANAKA, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

UC Irvine is teaming up with Google Inc. to become the first medical school in the nation to outfit its students with the company’s Glass wearable technology. Students will be able to witness doctors’ surgeries or patient visits up close and personal, while sitting miles away.

The medical school, following up on an earlier program pairing doctors at UCI Medical Center in Orange with Glass, will integrate the technology into its four-year curriculum. Beginning this month, 10 pairs will be used by third- and fourth-year med students, who will work in operating rooms and emergency departments.

Another 20 to 30 pairs will be added in August and are expected to be used to securely broadcast physicians working with patients in Orange while students in a lecture hall watch from 15 miles away in Irvine.

“I believe digital technology will let us bring a more impactful and relevant clinical learning experience to our students,” said Dr. Ralph V. Clayman, dean of the medical school. “Enabling our students to become adept at a variety of digital technologies fits perfectly into the ongoing evolution of health care into a more personalized, participatory, home-based and digitally driven endeavor.”

Google Glass is smart eyewear with a tiny screen above the right eye that can connect wirelessly to the Internet via voice commands, streaming images, data and live voices. A Texas startup called Pristine has been working with UCI to test an app that allows physicians to communicate with each other hands-free using the Glass features.

Up to now, Google has introduced Glass on a limited basis to the public. Because it includes a camera, Glass has generated privacy concerns and prompted some businesses to ban it – for example, movie theaters and many Las Vegas casinos.

Dr. Warren Wiechmann, assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine and associate dean of instructional technologies who will oversee implementation of the Google Glass program, said that patients must sign a consent detailing how Google Glass will be used for educational purposes.

Google began selling its $1,500 technology to the general U.S. public this week on its website.

The UCI initiative is the newest addition to the medical school’s growing digital education program, known as iMedEd. The program debuted four years ago when the university filled more than 100 Apple iPads with first-year medical textbooks and stuffed them into the white coats of all the incoming student doctors.

The iMedEd programs have been funded by philanthropists, including John Tu, co-founder of Kingston Technology Corp. in Fountain Valley, who paid for the iPad initiative. The first students from the iPad program will become medical residents in about two weeks.

Joe Randolph, president and CEO of the Innovation Institute, a spinoff of the St. Joseph Health System in Orange, said UCI’s adoption of Glass in its medical curriculum was exciting because it could help discover effective ways to use the fledgling technology.

“I think the medical industry is struggling with the best application for Google Glass,” he said. “Getting future physicians comfortable with the technology is a good way to introduce it to the industry itself.”

The UCI medical school says students will benefit from the ability to review crucial information while keeping their hands free, and to view and record live broadcasts of student training activities and medical procedures using software that complies with federal privacy rules.

Aurora Cruz, a third-year UCI medical student who is studying neurosurgery, said Google Glass should be helpful in learning how to perform minimally invasive surgeries, which are common in her chosen specialization.

During such procedures, only the attending physician and resident can actually see into the hole they cut in the patient, because it is small and the instruments they use to hold it open obstruct the view, Cruz explained.

“If that surgeon was wearing Google Glass and the image was being projected in the operating room from the surgeon’s perspective, it would allow everyone in the room to have a better sense of what’s going on,” she said.

The university already has tested the wearable tech in a clinical setting at UCI Medical Center. Using it, surgeons might one day be able to keep their hands inside a patient while viewing vital signs streaming in the corner of their vision or a checklist of tasks that ensure no step is forgotten.

A camera on Glass captures a scene as the wearer sees it while staying out of the way. So the photographer – in this case a doctor – would never break eye contact with a patient. Meanwhile, students miles away can observe the interaction.

Or the patient could wear Glass, allowing medical students to see themselves through the eyes of the people they are trying to help.

“Glass gives unprecedented access to clinical encounters for students in the lecture hall,” Wiechmann said. It is “really a new window into how to build empathy.”

“The great thing about Glass is that it doesn’t really block your field of view,” he said. “You can maintain eye contact and body language – the main aspects of a physician’s interaction with a patient.”

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